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Literary Analysis: Thoreau essay
Henry david thoreau criticism
Thoreaus essays
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“The Thaw” by Henry David Thoreau has a couplet and two quatrains. The couplet, the first stanza does not rhyme though the two quatrain does. The rhyme scheme for Henry David Thoreau's poem, “The Thaw” has an A/B rhyme scheme; the first line rhymes with the third line, the second line rhymes with the fourth line, and so on. Furthermore the “The Thaw” has ten syllables in each line. Because the poem itself is short, there are only some figurative languages/poetic sound devices used throughout the poem, “The Thaw” by Henry David Thoreau. These figurative languages are utilized to make the poem seem more interesting. “I saw the civil sun drying earth’s tear / Her tears of joy that only faster flowed,” (1 and 2) is a great example of a figurative
Elie Wiesel and his family were forced from their home in Hungary into the concentration camps of the Holocaust. At a young age, Wiesel witnessed unimaginable experiences that scarred him for life. These events greatly affected his life and his writings as he found the need to inform the world about the Holocaust and its connections to the current society. The horrors of the Holocaust changed the life of Elie Wiesel because he was personally connected to the historical event as a Jewish prisoner, greatly influencing his award-winning novel Night.
Frost uses quite a bit of personification throughout the poem to give the sky and ocean human like traits. The use of this literary device helps embody the meaning of the poem. The first use of personification is seen in the second and third line “Great waves looked over others coming in/ and thought of doing something to the shore”. This illustrates how the waves were smashing upon each other and getting larger and larger than the ones before. The personification of the waves in line three, suggest that the waves have an actual mind of their and shall do what they wish.
Within “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant, he states “She has a voice of gladness, and a smile/And eloquence of beauty, and she glides/Into his darker musings, with a mild/And healing sympathy (Bryant, 4-6).” The “she” Bryant is referring to is Mother Nature, which makes his statement that nature can take away a man’s pain that much more powerful. By personifying nature, the reader feels as though they can relate to “her” in a different way. A poem that uses powerful metaphors is “The First Snowfall” by James Russell Lowell. Within his poem, he states, “From sheds new-roofed with Carrara/Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow/The stiff rails were softened to swan’s-down/And still fluttered down the snow (Lowell, 9-12).” The line “from sheds new-roofed with Carrara” is referring to how pure and white the snow that had just recently fallen looks. Carrara is an expensive white marble. So, Lowell is comparing expensive items to the snow, which helps put an image of a beautiful snowfall into the reader’s head. By using both personification and metaphors, the reader can relate to the words being said in a completely different way, and thus understand the abstract ideas that the authors are trying to convey in their Romantic
I awoke before the first rays of sunlight had passed through the dew-covered trees to the west today. It had rained the evening before, and the smell of wet leaves and grass was still lingering in the air.
The poems that most interested me are written by Robert Frost; Fire and Ice, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and Design. In these poem Frost uses the literary such as symbolism and rhyme scheme. Symbolism is used to provide the reader with a meaning other than the literary meaning of object or idea. Rhyme scheme is used to help the reader read and understand the poem. By using these two literary devices and more Frost has achieved many awards for his work.
What form of figurative language does the author use in line 5 of page 212 to make his writing more interesting?
Figurative language is when you use words or a phrase that do not have a regular, everyday literal meaning and is used by almost all authors in their writings. Authors use figurative language to make their works more interesting and more dramatic. Examples of figurative language include metaphors, similes, personification and hyperbole. Helena Maria Viramontes uses figurative language all throughout her novel Under the Feet of Jesus. In the opening paragraphs of the novel Viramontes uses imagery to set the scene for her readers, she really makes us feel as if we are riding along in the station wagon with Estrella and her 6 other family members. In this scene she describes to her readers reflects on the hardships that this family, and people
The influence of nature theme, seen in Romanticism, prevails in “The First Snowfall” and “The Snow-Storm” through figurative language, but through different types of figurative language: similes and personification. “The First Snowfall” employs similes in lines 13 to 16 and 19 and 20; “The Snow-Storm” uses personification in lines 3 to 5. The simile in lines 13 to 16, “I stood and watched by the window, the noiseless work of the sky, and the sudden flurries of snow birds, like brown leaves whirling by,” describes the birds that the narrator sees as leaves falling, which presents an influence of nature. The simile in lines 19 and 20, “How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood,” again mentions birds. Whereas, the personification in lines 3 to 5 of “The Snow-Storm,” “...the whited air, Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, and veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. “ personifies snow, (or “the whited air”), and claims that the snow hides and veils; snow, another element of nature, acts as Emerson’s gateway to bring nature into his work; Lowell’s birds act as his gateway.
Henry David Thoreau was a poet, social philosopher, and educator in the early to mid- 1800s (Hampton). He graduated from Harvard University in 1837 and, upon his return to his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson, also a philosopher and poet (Hampton, “Ralph Waldo Emerson”). Emerson was also the leader of the Transcendentalist movement which was based on the idea that people should lead by example -- social reform begins with the individual, not the government -- and that the movement should be peaceful (Woodlief, Ruehl). Thoreau agreed with this approach until the United States invaded Mexico in May, 1846 (Brown, Witherell). Opposed to slavery, Thoreau saw the invasion of Mexico as an attempt by the government to extend slavery westward. In his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” published in 1849 with the original title, “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau protests against the government and states that is a man’s duty to rise up against the government when the government commits a wrong (Thoreau). In his writings, Thoreau uses the three rhetorical approaches of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos in his attempts to persuade his readers to his point of view (Heinrichs).
Henry David Thoreau implies that simplicity and nature are valuable to a person’s happiness in “Why I Went to the Woods”. An overall theme used in his work was the connection to one’s spiritual self. Thoreau believed that by being secluded in nature and away from society would allow one to connect with their inner self. Wordsworth and Thoreau imply the same idea that the simple pleasures in life are easily overlooked or ignored. Seeing the true beauty of nature allows oneself to rejuvenate their mentality and desires. When one allows, they can become closer to their spiritual selves. One of William Wordsworth’s popular pieces, “Tintern Abbey”, discusses the beauty and tranquility of nature. Wordsworth believed that when people
After reading this poem and being quite confused by it, I was determined to find out what it meant. Its simplicity is misleading because it can represent several opposites in the world today that correspond to fire and ice. To begin my understanding of the poem, I decided to answer some questions. First question was who is some? Some represents humans, which is not difficult to understand, but then some can also represent lovers. This poem is mainly about desire and hate. In the poem, fire represents desire and ice represents hate. The first theory of fire most likely came from the bible, which describes the world ending this way and the second theory of ice is the scientific theory of the world freezing over when the sun burns out. Knowing these theories was somewhat useful, but did not really aid in understanding Frost's opinion on which would make for a better end.
The regular rhyme scheme -- A-B-C-C-B -- gives the poem a nursery-rhyme quality. In many places, the style seems to overpower the content: stanza 47 seems constructed solely to showcase the rhyme it contains: "Perhaps he's climbed into an oak / Where he will stay till he is dead" (ll. 233-234) is not really a worrisome fate, but it rhymes neatly with the last two lines of the stanza.
The second stanza seems to be the only stanza without a matching rhyme scheme; the first stanza has the fifth and the third has the fourth. This ‘lonesome’ stanza gives the poem a sense of imperfectness, just like the mortal life humans live in, whereas upon the urn life is ‘perfect’ and immortal.
Frost’s diction could be described as simplistic. Frost does not use large vocabulary words, but rather uses simpler everyday words that most people word use. By using a simpler vocabulary it allows the one to understand the meaning of the poem more clearly. The language used is a testament to Frost’s style of writing that he is known for. The language used is clear in this poem, such as “And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black. / Oh, I kept the first for another day!” (11-13). This type of diction helps the reader to analyze and interpret the poem more deeply. As the use of everyday language allows the poem to become more relatable and reach a more diverse audience. Diction is an important element of this poem as it adds to the poem’s
...ach other “Frosts poetry has a very vast range, from extremely long detailed poems, like ‘after apple picking” and “a servant to servants” or relatively short like, “A soldier” or “A question” (which is only four lines). Each of his poems encompasses something different but all have a strong sense of sameness when it comes to the message he wants to communicate to us. A brook in the city represents to a great extent, Frosts overall style and view on poetry. The poem has a rhyme scheme, he uses a vast amount of figures of speech and his language is colloquial, this goes for most, if not all of Frosts poetry. The poem also encompasses his thoughts and views on mankind and their response to the universe. Frost wants us as the reader to comprehend his message and find some sort of wisdom in it. If we do, then Frost has accomplished what he set out to do with his poetry.